User Profile

Wild Woila

wildwoila@wyrms.de

Joined 2 years, 8 months ago

I have #mecfs so I have a lot of time for reading, mostly #fantasy and #SciFi but I'm happy to dip into nearly anything.

Ratings: 1 star: I didn't like it 2 stars: it was okay 3 stars: I liked it 4 stars: I really liked it 5 stars: it was brilliant

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Wild Woila's books

Yaa Gyasi: Transcendent Kingdom (2020, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)

Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national bestseller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, …

Struggled to hold my attention or interest

Can science and God be reconciled? Why are some people prone to addiction? How not to deal with trauma. Struggled to hold my attention or interest.

reviewed The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Chronicles, #1)

Bernard Cornwell: The Winter King (1996)

The tale begins in Dark Age Britain, a land where Arthur has been banished and …

Life is squalid & brutal, with Arthur a shining hope

A realist telling of the Arthurian legend. With the Romans gone, Britain is failing: its gods weak, its kingdoms squabbling, beset on both side by the conquering Irish and Saxons. Life is squalid & brutal, with Arthur a shining hope, but neither he, nor anyone else, is as perfect as he seems.

Reading time 4 days, 122 pages/day

Sabaa Tahir: An Ember in the Ashes (Paperback, 2018, Thorndike Press Large Print)

Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.

Under the Martial Empire, …

Lacking in originality

(2 stars = it was okay)

Well done, but lacking in originality. All the YA fantasy tropes are there: training school, underground resistance, trials, dark magic, love triangle, disturbing violence. Sucked me in but left me with nothing.

Sophie Lewis: Abolish the Family (2022, Verso Books)

What if family were not the only place you might hope to feel safe, loved, …

Thought-provoking & disruptive

The nuclear family is a patriarchal institution of oppression & capital, and yet remains unquestioned. Thought-provoking & disruptive but short on constructive ideas. Heavy on the lib arts jargon.

avatar for wildwoila Wild Woila boosted

Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels gradually wreak havoc …

climate and hubris and mortality

Stunning, a climate apocalypse grounded in our current reality, that powerfully conveys a violent experience of living through a lifetime's decline in an intensely personal and local story - no boom-post-apocalypse, yet so many sharp inflections of loss and choosing between things you thought wouldn't matter til after you were gone away. It would be bizarre to call this a hopeful novel, but the undercurrent grows towards acceptance and dependence in the face of uncertainty, and it is beautifully done.